A friend of mine who is both a savvy entrepreneur and a politically engaged author, pointed out that we no longer have a model of "trickle down" economics but one of “flood-upward” to the top one percent, represented by the traders and bankers on Wall Street. He sent me a really striking newsletter about this and I can't resist sharing it with you. It contains, inter alia, a fantastic diagram, judge for yourself!

By Gordon S. Black, PhD

The propaganda circulating on the Internet would have you believe that President Barack Obama is engaging in class warfare – pitting the middle and working classes against the “great” makers and shakers who supposedly create the wealth in America.

The current protests on Wall Street and elsewhere are raising the same issue – who is getting better off in America today, the ninety-nine percent represented by most of us or the one percent represented by the men and women who created the financial meltdown in 2008? This is actually a pretty easy question to answer, and you might find it interesting. The chart above is an answer to the questions – who in American is winning the “Class Warfare” and when did it start. The dividing dates are the beginning of the Reagan Revolution in 1980 and the end of the Bush Revolution in 2007.

President John Kennedy famously said: “A rising tide raises all boats,” and in his time it did. The economic prosperity of the post-war period was a shared prosperity that made everyone better off. That “shared prosperity” ended with the three decades that started in 1980. For the top one percent, life has never been better – huge mansions, private jets and yachts, private schools for their children, and the like. They are clearly the “winners” of the new economic policies. For the rest of us, the top 20 percent is doing all right, but it has been a struggle for everyone else.

Unfortunately, “trickle-down” economics is actually “flood-upward” to the top one percent, represented by the traders and bankers on Wall Street – the men and women who get their huge bonuses even when their institutions fail and spread misery among the rest of us. The very people who today decry even the most basic safety net for ordinary Americans demand and get their own private safety net against their own failures -- the safety net of "too big to fail" that supports the luxurious lifestyles of tens of thousands of corporate bigwigs who have the political muscle to force Congress to protect them in ways that they would deny to all of the rest of America. This is the new morality of the corporate managerial elite.

Obama did not start the “class warfare.” It started long before he came into office, and he is attempting to fight back with “too little and too late.” He is up against a $100 million dollar propaganda machine funded by people like the Koch Brothers and aimed at the little people who should know better, but do not.

But how did this happen?

How could the world change so dramatically for the ninety-nine percent of us without our understanding why or how it happened?

Basically, over the past three decades, the “special interests” in the United States, representing the new “plutocracy,” have purchased Congress wholesale through the campaign financing system, and this chart is a direct expression of the need of the incumbent members of Congress to pay off those “interests” with your and my tax dollars. Their money, backed by billions in lobbying and paid-for advertising and other propaganda, owns Congress on both sides of the aisle, and this chart is what you get – the middle class declining, the working class without jobs, and the impoverished expanding, all trickle-down effects of an experiment in economics begun in 1980 and culminated with the tax-cut experiment under George Bush.

If this is our reality, why do they accuse Obama of “Class Warfare?”

All propagandists operate with the same kind of lying. The Nazi’s, sponsored by the Krupp Industries, accused Poland of aggression as a pre-text for invading them. The Bush Administration, sponsored by the Koch Brothers, accused Iraq of possessing “weapons of mass destruction” as a pretext for invading Iraq. Now, they accuse Obama of starting a “class warfare” that they themselves started more than three decades ago, and which they are winning spectacularly.

These people rely on you, the American voters, to be dead, dumb and blind to their perfidy – to be little piglets that they can lead to their slaughter where they get everything eventually, and you get nothing at all.

The final question only you can answer. Are you going to let them continue to slaughter your dreams for yourself and your family?

Trust me – they believe after three decades of success that you will do nothing to stop them. Are they right?

10.08.2011

I live in the "green heart" of Italy - that's how Italians call Umbria. Il cuore verde dell'Italia. Right next to Tuscany, it is the land of black truffles, ham, cheese, wine, olive oil, fabulous vegetables and pasta not to mention meat. The famous bistecca alla Fiorentina comes from beef produced 10 miles from where I live. What better place to experiment with cooking?

Recently I've set up my own vegetable garden, not far from Lake Trasimeno, famous for its spectacular sunsets:

This year, for the first time we've grown our own vegetables (we've always lived in the city) and it's been quite an adventure: too much of one sort (eggplants, leeks, zucchini), too little of another (cucumber, melon). But whatever we managed to produce tasted exceptional. Tomatoes were actually RED!

You've guessed it, because of the vegetable garden, I found myself often in the kitchen. Thank God I love cooking! Food was always a matter of intense interest in my family, probably a combination of our French background and the numerous travels that brought us in contact with exotic cuisines. When I grew up, we moved all over: from Sweden to Egypt, Belgium, Russia, France, Colombia, the United States, Russia again, Italy, in that order. I've lived in Italy for the past...35 years - longer than anywhere else in the world!

But now that I'm here by Lake Trasimeno, I feel at home.

Being married to an Italian, I tend to cook Italian-style to please him...and myself! This is a country where you learn to love genuine, unaltered food rather than try to make clever sauces the way the French do.

This said, a nice tasty sauce to accompany fish is always welcome, particularly when if you live far away from the sea and the poor fish has lost its sea flavor in the long haul to your home!

If you can't grow your own veggies, I'd recommend you get bio food in spite of the extra cost. Bio is generally worth it because...I know, you think I'm going to tell you it's healthier. Maybe it is, this I don't know. But I do know bio food tastes noticeably better...except for eggs! I don't know why. You can't tell a bio egg from one that isn't. Worse, bio eggs don't poach well at all...Just like all the others! I mean, if you try to drop them in slow-boiling water, well...you have a mess! The egg white separates from the yolk and starts floating in the water in long filaments. If you've found a way to avoid that problem, let me know!

For some Italian recipes, like eggplants alla Parmigiana, it's taken me over twenty years to figure out exactly how to do it, and get the eggplant to be both light and airy inside and crisp on the outside. No soggy, oily stuff for me! In fact, I positively hate oily food and use olive oil as little as possible, just enough to avoid burning!

This said, NEVER leave out cooking oils (or butter - provided you don't burn it!) from your cooking. A little oil is necessary for the body to function properly.

Actually that's been my life rule: since doctors keep changing their advice about what constitutes a healthy diet, I've decided to eat a little of everything, and use every cooking method, not leaving any out. Do you remember how a few years ago, you were supposed to avoid eggs and spinach? Yet in an earlier decade, eggs were considered extremely healthy and Popeye the Sailor is said to have been invented to promote spinach eating...out of a can, for Goodness' sakes!!!

And you know something odd? The eggplants coming out of my garden, grown without fertilizers or additives of any kind, DON'T TASTE BITTER at all! All cookbooks tell you to sprinkle salt on the eggplant slices and leave it there to soak up the "bitter liquid" inside the eggplants. Well, mine don't have that liquid! They're incredibly sweet and I can cook them without any preparation at all.

Makes you wonder how industrial farms grow eggplants and what it is exactly that you buy in supermarkets...

I set up a separate blog for my recipes - more a den for family and friends than a real blog! It contains nothing but true and tried recipes, the kind I give to my children and hope they will continue to make for their own children...

Click here to go to that blog, try the recipes (they're all super easy) and enjoy! I've pasted below my recipe for Waterzoie, the Belgian National Dish (oh yes, I forgot to tell you, I'm Belgian, not Italian!)

There are 10 million people in Belgium and probably as many ways to make Waterzoie, the national dish! You can make it with chicken or fish or seafood, but in all cases it will have leeks as its characteristic feature. It really is a leek soup with either chicken or fish floating in it.

Sounds bad? Think again! It really is very, very tasty and remarkably easy to do if you follow my recipe - it can be quite a lot of work if you start from scratch and actually make a broth with bones and vegetables to cook your meat or fish in. We're in the 21st century and I'm not ashamed to confess that I use industrial bouillon cubes...

Another advantage of Waterzoie is that it can be prepared in advance: the perfect dish when you have guests!

So here's the recipe for 4 persons.

Ingredients

2 cups of leeks cut in julienne strips (at least 4 leeks and try to use the white part and not too much of the green)

1/2 cup white onion, likewise cut in strips

1/2 cup celery, also cut in strips

1 whole breast chicken, leave it whole or cut in two halves, Alternative: fish or seafood

1 cup cream (since I live in Italy I use Mascarpone, but normal cream is fine and is what's used in Belgium)

1 egg yolk

Juice of 1/2 lemon(or more as needed - it has to have a sharp "tang")

Butter: one tablespoon

Flour to thicken the sauce (about one tablespoonful of flour plus one of cornflour - maizena - but you will need to adjust to the quantity of broth you have)

Boiled potatoes to accompany

Method

Boil the potatoes and while they're boiling prepare the waterzoie.

1. Cut all the vegetables, leeks, onion and celery, in thin strips - julienne - about 1/2 inch long. Put in a wide pot,cover with water, add bouillon cube and a small amount (a tablespoonful) of butter.

3. After that time and as the vegetables start looking limp, add over them the chicken breasts and sprinkle a little salt over the meat. Cover and continue to simmer another 20 minutes until cooked. At that point the vegetables should be soft and the chicken cooked throughout and tender.

3a. If you use fish then you have to add it after the vegetables have cooked at least 20 minutes: the fish always cooks fast. How long that will take depends on the kind of fish you have chosen: for example, sea bass filets in my view don't need more than 5 minutes. Same with shrimps. More time is needed for lobster. Everytime, adjust the cooking of your vegetables that will always require 30 minutes to reach the right point of mellowness.

4. Now in a saucepan prepare the basis of your sauce: beat in a tablespoonful of flour and one of cornflour in 2 cups cold water and set on the fire to boil. This is how I make a "roux": I don't start by melting butter and working the flour in it. That's not needed! You can always add the butter - fresh, better for your health - at the end, when the sauce is done! Remember to beat it with a whisk so that the flour mixes well in the water and keep beating when it boils. It should boil at least 5 minutes to ensure the flour is cooked.

5. Pull out the chicken (or fish) from the pot where cooked and set aside on a warm serving dish (cover to keep the meat warm) You will serve the potatoes peeled in the same serving dish.

6. Do the sauce: pour the "roux" mixture from your saucepan (that you did in step 4) into the pot with the vegetables. Adjust the quantity of broth (I like it fairly liquid - but it's up to you, how thick a leek sauce you really want). Add chicken bouillon cube(s) or fish broth as needed so that it is rather strong tasting: it shouldn't be too bland because at this point you add the cream+ egg yolk + lemon juice. Adjust with salt, pepper and lemon to taste. Once the yolk is in, be careful if you need to warm it up : you cannot boil the sauce anymore or it will turn stringy on you!

7. To serve: put the sauce (which will be very abundant!) in a soup toureen, and cut the chicken and potatoes for presentation on the serving dish.

This dish should be accompanied by full-bodied red wine if done with chicken - white wine if done with fish.

It has its weaknesses and limitations, but no one will disagree that it is by far one of the most useful sources of information and in this early 21st century, it has already replaced for most people - if not for everybody - recourse to the printed Encyclopedia.

Wikipedia blocked all its articles on living Italians, politicians, artists, celebrities - and chief among them Berlusconi - as a 48 hour measure of self-censure to bring home the point to its Italian users of what impact the Government's new wiretap decree would have once approved by Parliament.

If you do a search on Wikipedia you will come across a notice explaining why the information is blocked: under the new law, anyone feeling unhappy with information could demand an amendment. "The obligation to publish on our site the correction... without even the right to discuss and verify the claim" they wrote, "is an unacceptable restriction of the freedom and independence of Wikipedia."

This obligation is contained in a draft privacy law intended to restrict police wiretaps of the kind that have embarrassed Berlusconi, caught at organizing his famous bunga-bunga parties with young girls - presumably paid whores that his entourage procured him.

He's been trying to tighten Italy's privacy laws since 2008 and it looks like he's about to succeed now.

Unless some Parliamentarians, in the secret voting, decide not to follow instructions from Berlusconi (and his ally Bossi of the Northern League)...But don't kid yourself, they may exempt Wikipedia and blogs from the law, but they will vote most of it through!

Everything should be decided on October 6th and perhaps the decree "ammazzablog" (blog killing) will be amended.

But does that mean that one of democracy's basic freedoms will be preserved?

I don't think so and let me explain why.

Sure, the popular reaction in Italy has been swift and that is certainly most encouraging. It has ranged from Italian protesters wearing gags in front of Parliament to Facebook protest pages where within a few hours over 100,000 people - and possibly at this time of writing, close to a million - have signed.

The press reacted too, and all Italian periodicals had something to say, from Corriere della Sera to La Stampa, publishing over 1,000 articles related to the issue. With just one obvious exception: Il Giornale that unsurprisingly came to the defense of Berlusconi's wiretap law - unsurprisingly because it is owned by Berlusconi's brother.

The Italian blogosphere also amply resonated with protest. For a vivid example of the ire this has stirred against Berlusconi, click here.

Setting the popular reaction aside, how solid is democracy in Italy?

Consider the difficulty the Italian political system is encountering in getting rid of Berlusconi.

He is probably the most unpopular Prime Minister in all of Italy's post-war History. Contempt for this man is universal. I know, I live in Italy and I see it everywhere, in bars, coffee shops, markets, newspapers, blogs...

He's made promises of reform and he has maintained none. People are tired of his empty promises.

He hasn't even solved the revolting scandal of thrash disposal in Naples. He sent in the army to clean the city, but didn't solve the problem at its root. Two years later, the city is still struggling with mounting garbage in its streets and has yet to find a way to dispose of it in the face of a corrupt and inept municipal and regional government.

True, he's got a couple of effective ministers in his government: Tremonti (finance) and Marroni (interior). You may not like them but they manage to get things done...up to a point.

The immigration situation is for the moment under control (or should I say under wraps?) but it could burst in the open any moment. The financial situation is getting worse by the minute as Greece sinks under the weight of its debt. And everybody wonders whether Italy is not the next Greece.

Italian banks, with a few exceptions, may appear relatively healthy but it's only an appearance of health. In fact, they hold Italian bonds - but Italian debt is not just the State's, but also the regions' and municipalities. Cities like Milan and Rome have accumulated huge debts that no one is talking about. Yet they are there, as threatening as the Italian State debt.

We've recently seen this regional debt phenomena burst open in Portugal (in Madeira) and in Spain. Don't believe it isn't going to come into the open in Italy! That's when Moody's and the rating agencies will really get to work. I bet they'll bring down Italy to B level!

In this coming financial storm - that could very well cause a world-wide recession - how will the Italian political class behave? What will they do?

Very little or nothing. Why?

Because they are hopelessly corrupt. They don't vote Berlusconi out because they are attached to their privileges - ranging from a ridiculously high monthly income and pension rights to small things like a free cell phone and free train rides and official cars. They certainly don't want to go to early elections and lose all the privileges!

They don't want a parliamentarian reform that would reduce the number of parliamentarians: the more, the merrier!

They love the wiretap law because it would set them free to say anything they like to their buddies on their cost-free cell phones without fearing any prosecution.

They will never vote the kind of profound reforms needed to balance the budget - like a real overhaul of the pension system or reduction in the number of state employees - because it would alienate most of their electors.

If you don't believe me, consider that the Italian Parliament is about to increase the number of its own employees (by 400) using an internal "leggina" that would allow it to bypass the process of public approval and selection. A great way to give out jobs to family and friends!

In this climate of corruption and clientelism, how do you think major issues like the sovereign debt crisis can be handled?

How I think it's going to be handled will be the subject of a future blog post, but in the meantime I'd love to hear what you think!

10.04.2011

Amanda Knox in Perugia Image by Getty Images via @daylifeAmanda Knox is free, the Italian appellate court has dropped the murder charge against her! Her four-year long ordeal has at last come to an end.

In spite of the storm in the media, it really isn't too surprising: the Italian appellate judge and jury called on to decide what to do with her and her onetime boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, could only work on limited, unconvincing evidence.

There was no definitive witness or evidence showing what really happened on the night of Nov. 1, 2007, when her British roommate Meredith Kercher was murdered in Perugia. Rudy Guede, who came to Italy from the Ivory Coast, was the only person found guilty and he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He refused to testify that Knox and Sollecito were "not involved" in the murder. But the DNA evidence was found to be "possibly unsound" so, in the end, charges were dropped.

This long-winded trial (but Justice in Italy is always slow!) gave me an idea for a short story titled Good-bye Melinda. You'll find it reproduced below.

But let me tell you right away that it is FICTION! The characters and events portrayed in this short story are fictitious and any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Sorry to have to give out these classic warnings but I must! Good-bye Melinda is NOT intended as a depiction of what happened in Perugia, and never was. Also please note it was written in 2008, long before much of what transpired came to be known, and indeed many of the details in my short story are totally different. It is just a piece of fiction, exactly like Agatha Christie when she was inspired by news of thefts and murders.

To write fiction you always have to start from some point in the everyday reality around you! And I happen to live in Italy, a couple of miles from the prison where Amanda Knox was tried...The only thing that matters is whether you the reader enjoy reading it, and I hope you do!

Good-bye Melinda

‘Stupid! Sei stupida!’

He screamed and slapped me hard. I’ll never forget the first time he hit me. I thought I was going to die.

Then I got used to it. If only I could float away and forget it all. Be somewhere else – back home in America, in my parents’ garden by the lake, watching the sun go down, trying to catch that famous last flash of green light, something I have never been able to do.

With all the hitting and the pain, I couldn’t float away into blessed oblivion. I couldn’t pretend I was somewhere else. Here I was – incredibly, unaccountably – locked up in a stinking Italian jail. My gaoler, a big dark man with a bristling black beard and a nasty grin towered over me but I hardly saw him anymore. My eyes kept tearing up and he wouldn’t let me wipe them.

‘You’re so stupid!’ Then, back to the questioning: ‘Don’t you remember him? Bongo, your sweet little friend from Gabon? He was there with you in your house when Melinda died…’

I shook my head. As far as I could remember, he wasn’t.

‘You’re lying!’ the man roared. ‘Everyone has seen you with Bongo, you work together in the same bar at night, you drink together, you do drugs together, you make love together…Do you want me to go on?’

I shook my head. Of course, I knew Bongo, the gentle “nero” as they called him here in Florence. He was a student like all of us; I was into Renaissance art, he was into modern architecture, we had met at the language course: we both needed our Italian spruced up – in fact, that’s why he and I were here. I knew him like I knew so many others – so what?

‘Have you lost your tongue?’ the man roared, ‘You drive me crazy! How can you deny the evidence? The neighbors saw the four of you come back to your house around midnight. Dancing and singing in the street, screaming your heads off – you didn’t care if you woke up the whole neighborhood. Other people go to work in the morning, but you rich kids never do…’

I shrugged.

‘You slut! You come to Italy to have a good time, all you think of is your own sweet pleasure, but, let me tell you, it’s over. Over, do you hear me? Over!’ he screamed. ‘Melinda is dead, and if it isn’t Bongo’s fault, then it’s yours! Is that what you want? We’ll slap the murder charge on you!’

He stopped, out of breath and then added in a raucous voice: ‘you know what? I am beginning to think that poor Bongo had nothing to do with it! Melinda was your roommate, she was your friend. You knew her. Murders always happen among people who know each other well. You were the one with every reason to kill her!’

I shuddered, and opened my mouth to tell him it was nonsense. But nothing came out. It was too difficult to explain.

Melinda was my roommate, sure, but we weren’t friends. She was sweet but fat and homely. I am thin and I like smart clothes. She was too English, too narrow-minded, too stuck to be my friend. We really had nothing in common and nothing to say to each other. But I didn’t actively dislike her. She was a convenient roommate. She paid her part of the rent, she kept the kitchen clean, she was discrete.

We went out together not because we were friends. It was because of the men. I met a lot of people at the bar and so did Bongo. He was helpful. He was willing to come along when I wasn’t sure I wanted to date a particular guy. He’d pair up with Melinda. It was convenient. I think he liked her English peach and cream look.

That evening we had made a foursome with Giacomo, an Italian I had just met. Good looking, lots of dark, curly hair, a ring in his ear that made him look like a pirate of the Caribbean. But there was something ominous about him - like a hidden secret and I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the night with him.

When we got home, he produced grass, we smoked the four of us in the kitchen of our old rented house. With thick walls and tight-shutting windows, we needn’t fear any intrusion, and that was nice and relaxing. Then something happened next door, in Melinda’s room.

‘Don’t pretend you don’t remember, because I know you do!" yelled the man. "Let’s go over this one more time. And this is the last time: my patience is at an end! At the end of the evening, Melinda went to her room, didn’t she?’

He shook me repeating in a scream: ‘didn’t she?’

I nodded. She did.

‘Who went in with her?’

I shook my head. Giacomo was with me and so was Bongo. At least I think so but I was tired of telling him. I had said it all before.

‘It was Bongo, the “nero” kid who followed her in? Wasn’t it? Come on, you know he did. What’s stopping you?’

I don’t know what’s stopping me. I just can’t remember. May be Bongo went in, and Giacomo and I stayed behind in the kitchen, smoking away. I just don’t remember.

But why would Bongo ever murder Melinda? He liked her so much. Who could have done it? I wish I knew. It’s frightening not to know. Was it Giacomo? But he had only just met Melinda, he hardly knew her, or did he? There was this darkness about him, that look of repressed violence – perhaps he cultivated it to impress females. In a way, he had succeeded with me: I thought him interesting, but he scared me. I didn’t trust him. I don’t know why.

My goaler stared at me in silence, disgust showing in his face. ‘You know, sometimes I think you kids get so bored in life that you’re ready to try anything to get a high," he said. "And when drugs won’t do it, a good murder will, with blood everywhere. Do you have any idea at all how repulsive all this is?’

I thought he was going to hit me again but he didn’t. He stomped out, banging the door shut. I was one again alone in my cell. I watched the sun go down through the bars until it was totally dark, and I thought of the sun back home. There was no flash of green light. There never is.

The next day was a repeat.

And the next one, and the next after. How many days? I lost count. I never had any answers.

The more they asked, the more I was confused. And afraid. Who knows who had done it? Bongo, the one with the fat, jolly smile? Giacomo, with his dark, brooding eyes? Could it have been me? That was scary. If I was capable of killing Melinda and couldn’t remember a thing, what kind of a person was I?

One day, after a long, long time the door opened and someone who wasn’t my gaoler stepped in. A big man.

My father!

I ran up to him and sobbed, crying my heart out. He took me in his strong arms and looked at me intensely with his soft blue eyes: I felt like his little girl again. My life had come apart. Surely he had the answer, didn’t he? It couldn’t have been me. No it couldn’t, he said, I shouldn’t worry. He was very firm on that point, he knew who it was. Bongo of course, who else? Not the Italian, but the boy from Gabon. The African. That was obvious, couldn’t I see it? I shook my head. And then my father lost his patience, just like the gaoler.

‘You’re stupid!’ he yelled, ‘Why can’t you remember who went into that room with Melinda?’

Bongo, of course, who else?

Maybe so. I agreed because he was my father. And I was immediately rewarded. Peace descended on me. I knew I was safe.

Together at last, my father and I sat in my cell and watched the sun go down in silence. Between the bars. This time I caught a ray of green light, just before it sank below the Tuscan hills.

* * *

Much later – fifteen years later – I sought out Bongo in Florence when he came out of jail after serving his sentence. He had grown fat but I recognized his warm dimpled smile immediately.

We had espresso at the bar near the Duomo where we used to work. Suddenly, he leant forward across the table and, speaking softly, he thanked me profusely for the million dollars my father had given him. He was now a rich man – a happy man. There was only one thing he regretted: Melinda.

Good-bye Melinda…

Enjoyed it? If you'd like to read more short stories inspired by current events, click here

9.30.2011

When Bob Dylan the Singer became a Painter and had a show in the famed Gagosian gallery, all hell broke loose. Why? Because his paintings are made from photographs that are not even his own! People started throwing insults like "plagiarism!" or suggesting that he wasn't really painting from "real life" (see the numerous articles below).

The New York Times used a more restrained tone, check here. Still, I'm sure that in many people's mind the damage is done.

Is it fair to Dylan? Is he really a great singer and a lousy painter?

Here's the way I see it and you can judge for yourself.

First consider how close his paintings are to photographs. The one reported by the New York Times that is most striking is this one (even the details in the background are the same):

Before you run away screaming, let me point out that many famous painters have used photography as props for their paintings.

Perhaps the first and greatest among them was Delacroix, celebrated for his horses. One thing is sure, he was able to catch them in movement better than anyone before him thanks to photographs. With the exception of Michelangelo of course, but that doesn't count: Michelangelo was a flat out genius.

And Delacroix didn't even take his own photos. Just like Bob Dylan.

Surprised? Actually before photography was invented, painters used the camera oscura - for example, Canaletto and Vermeer. There is little doubt that both owe to that technique the superb accuracy of their paintings - the perspective of Venice palaces and canals in Canaletto's case, and the proportion of Dutch women in their interiors in Vermeer's case.

The use of the camera oscura is also particularly evident in some of Vermeer's paintings, like this one (the music lesson) where the perspective of the geometric pavement could not have been achieved without mechanical help:

I don't think so. Of course we don't have the originals, we can't judge exactly how they "tweaked" what they saw, how they transcended reality. But transcend, they did!

The same process is at work with photographs, and it can be such a radical process that the photograph is one thing and the painting quite another. Just to illustrate my point if I may be allowed to use examples drawn from my own work (don't worry, I'm not going to push my paintings on you - I'm well aware I'm not in the Vermeer/Canaletto class!).

Here's a photo of an olive tree I took in Sicily:

And here's a first painting:

And here's another, one step further into abstraction (both are oil on wood panel):

See how far the painting is from the original?

The same can be said for the photos and paintings of people. One day I roamed the Paris tube taking photos, and used them to make what I called a "counterlight" series of paintings (always oil on wood). For example, one photo of a perplexed looking man:

Resulted in this painting:

Compared to the original photograph, the painting is an exercise in creative freedom! I'm not saying it's good or bad and you don't need to like them. I just wanted to show the leeway an artist has with the reality a photo gives him. You start at a well known point, say point A, and then you the artist, with your sensibilities, you move to any other point in the alphabet! That's what makes Art so fascinating! The endless possibility of twisting reality...I'm not pretending that my work is in any way remarkable, just that it offers one interpretation on reality. I could have gone in all sorts of different directions: acquarelle, line drawing, cubist painting, abstract, anything. Actually I'd love to turn my olive trees into sculptures (but no time for that: I'm busy writing the third book of my Fear of the Past trilogy!)

There is really no difference between working directly from reality or from the image of reality given by a camera. Indeed many artists don't work from either: they use what they remember seeing - that's what Picasso often did, and he gave himself absolute freedom when he deconstructed his memories in the various styles he chose (from cubism to neo-classicism).

Now take a close look at Bob Dylan's painting reproduced here. Forget the similarities with the photograph. Focus on what is different. See how far he diverges from the Cartier-Bresson photo: he has applied to it a subtle palette of earthy colors, that highlight the earthiness of the dealers. What we can't see here (because we are looking at a photograph of a painting) is the texture of the painting: is it rough and scraggly? Shiny and smooth? Texture matters in a painting, it's half the pleasure! To know how Dylan's paintings are like you need to go look at them in the Gagosian gallery...

The fact that Bob Dylan has chosen to work from a given reality (that of Cartier-Bresson and other photographers) doesn't make him, in my humble opinion, less of an artist. He has reworked what he sees with his own emotions and visual sensibilities.

What do you think? Is Bob Dylan an artist or a plagiarist? I believe he's the former....

9.27.2011

The survey, carried out by the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts), a public agency created in 1965, is solid: it covered a big sample (18,000 adults) and was done in partnership with the US Census Bureau.

The NEA Chairman talks of a "dramatic turnaround". And so it is!

This marks a SEA CHANGE in American reading habits in the last 25 years! Every previous survey (in 1982-92 and 1992-2002) had turned up declines in reading rates!

It reports that in 2008 there were 16.6 million new readers of literature (novels, short stories, plays and poems), and most of them young adults, of which the largest group is between the age of 18 and 24, and it's also the one most rapidly increasing: 21%!

Wow! That's mind boggling! It's not old people retiring who are reading more, no, it's YOUNG PEOPLE! That's truly promising! It means our literary future is not going to be bare, the written word in this Internet Age is not going to disappear!

To understand what happened you need to look at social and economic changes, in addition of course to the NEA's own activities to promote reading (among them, a quite respectable push to attract American attention on Shakespeare, reaching some 21 million people). Let's remember that the economy was booming along until 2007/2008 - presumably lifting upwards the lower middle classes. Therefore, and not unsurprisingly, the sharpest overall increase in reading rate was among Hispanic Americans (+20%) followed by African Americans (+15%).

In terms of literary preferences, fiction continued to win (novels, short stories) while poetry continued to decline. Guess poetry is not well adapted to 21st century tastes!

The other interesting aspect is that in 2008, already 15% of adults read their fiction online - yet that was the year just before the Kindle and e-reader explosion! So the digital revolution (I mean ebooks) hadn't really impacted yet the results of this survey - it was just starting.

Wonder what American reading habits look like now, considering that Amazon sells more ebooks than printed books, and the rate of increase of ebooks is reportedly some 21% a year.

In terms of absolute size, the American market is simply huge (it's half the total population): some 119 millions read books in any format, of which 113 million read fiction!

About Claude Forthomme (Nougat)

A Columbia University graduate, Claude is an economist with a 25 year career at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization where she rose in the ranks, from project evaluation officer to Regional Representative for Europe and Central Asia. Since 2004, she is a delegate of the Order of Malta to the three Rome-based UN Agencies (FAO, World Food Programme and IFAD). Before her UN experience, she had worked in banking, publishing, journalism, college teaching and marketing.

She is also a writer of fiction books, in Italian under the pen name Claude Bonanno and in English under the pen name Claude Nougat. And following in the footsteps of her mother, a successful portraitist (name: Ruyters) in New York in the 1960s, Claude also paints. She is a member of Artistes Indépendants (Paris) and has participated in 15 shows so far, including 2 personal in Paris and Rome.

Contributor to Publishing Perspectives and several other online publications. She is Co-Editor of Impakter.